PART II: FURTHER RELECTIONS ON SYSTEM PERTURBATIONS
This will continue the System Perturbation discussion on 5GW on from Part I. and comment on select elements in the following posts:
“‘Global Guerrillas’ as 5GW Warriors” by Curtis at Dreaming 5GW
“Toward Ensembles Acting with Authority” by RevG at Christian Soldiers
First off, I liked both of these posts for the depth at which each author considered the implications of the system perturbation concept as applied to human affairs. I have points of agreement and disagreement but I will limit myself to a few examples of each.
Curtis Gale Weeks wrote:
” …have said many times: the hardest thing to track is a meme. But I have never given an explanation for why this is so. Here it is: memes do not travel. They are not transmitted. They emerge. Within individuals. This is OODA. “
This was interesting. I agree there are clear-cut instances of memetic emergence – take for example, calculus with Newton and Leibniz. On the other hand, the track record for transmission of long existing memes by observation seems to be pretty well established across the animal kingdom, though in the collective sense, with culture, individual transmission of menes would amount to emergence. Depends on the perspective at which we are arguing this point.
“However, these various GG rule-sets will emerge in multiple places, as the result of slightly or perhaps very different observations or of different immediate concrete effects / environments. In Robb-speak, this means that the various GG factions will have no ‘common’ motivation. He once said that they will have a similar objective; and, I responded at the time that a similar objective is a similar motivation, insofar as objectives motivate individuals to act”
Generally, Global Guerillas will not manage to set off system perturbations, such events are rare things, but their destructive actions will add to the aggregate amount of “noise” in the system. The “noise” or “chaos” ( or “entropy” or ” novelty”) is the the disintegration of the old system which creates a certain fluidity or space in which people will naturally seek out rules to create certainty. The weakening of the old system’s authority makes the construction of new rule-sets both easier and harder while creating the necessity to do so.
So Global Guerillas might have a “common effect”. And should they succeed in setting off a system perturbation what is accomplished is a dramatic acceleration of the process.
RevG wrote:
“Those who act upon fundamentals analysis require relatively stable systems or at least ones where system perturbation can be anticipated. System perturbation creates novelty, a kinder term than chaos or entropy but functionally identical. Their fundamentals analysis apprehends a historical view anticipating traditional cause and effect chains to continue intact. The required assumption of continuity is key with significant system perturbations necessitating a new or at least revised fundamental analysis. As human endeavor has evolved these chains have become both more complex and more complicated. Complexity has increased as the number of chains has propagated. Even though each chain may be simple, the sheer number of cause and effect chains has increased by a huge factor. This has lead to the emergence of unpredictable secondary effects due solely to there being vastly more cause and effect chains. This proliferation of the number of cause and effect chains, this increase in complexity, has contributed to a higher level of novelty”
True. The effects go beyond secondary – the number of variables and the outlier levels to which a major system perturbation can ” ripple” makes it difficult to get a mental handle on the logical outcomes, much less the unintended and unanticipated ones. It is not something easily done even with sophisticated computer models, as attempts to model global warming have demonstrated, a considerable sacrifice in accuracy is incurred. The strategic question is which players are best placed to find oportunity rather than loss in such a disruption ?
“The current environment already possesses a high level of novelty and novelty levels will only increase. More complexity and complications will increase novelty levels. Attempts to reduce complexity and complications will also reduce interconnectivity, which will increase novelty levels. This leads to the question of how to effectively act while implementing analysis of the current environment before increasing levels of novelty invalidates the analysis. The answer involves speed of action relative to analysis. Increasing levels of novelty increase the need for speed. As this development accelerates anything that retards action relative to analysis will possess ever-lessening utility. This has a direct bearing upon the location of the authority to act with profound implications for human society.”
As discussed in the earlier comments, increased speed ( or modulation of speed) is a strong possibility. It is however, not the only way to ” get inside” your opponents OODA Loop and what matters is thay you get inside. This would lead me to suggest that one way to characterize the difference might be is that 4GW had asymmetric warriors while 5GW will have asynchronous ones.
“Fifth Generation Warfare is and will be conducted by ensembles acting with authority. The protected hierarchies’ authority distributed through unity of organization will be replaced by unity of purpose among ensembles or there will be no unity among the ensembles at all. Protected hierarchies must shift to providing unity of purpose in the vacuum created by the loss of unity of organization or atrophy. Ensembles acting with authority guided by unity of purpose are the immediate future of human society if human society is to have a future at all. “
I like the ensembles analogy. Distributed actors with “smartmob” action that have the capacity to dominate a much larger network.
ADDENDUM:
Shloky has his own reflections to offer
